The 59th World Statistics Congress (WSC) of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), Hong Kong, China, 25-30 August 2013 How to Cite?

Abstract

To establish the link between an arrested suspect and a crime case based
on a DNA mixture, one of the two main statistical tools used by forensic
scientists is the random man not excluded (RMNE) probability. The tradi-
tional RMNE approach omits any knowledge on the number of contributors
and is commonly regarded as being less powerful than the likelihood (LR)
approach. In view of the simplicity of interpretation of RMNE, which is the
major advantage of using it to present DNA evidences in court, we present
a new concept for the interpretation and calculation of the RMNE proba-
bility. A new approach for determining the non-exclusion of a random man
is proposed, upon which a general formula for the calculation of RMNE
probability is developed. By taking account of the number of contributors,
the new RMNE probability can be much more powerful for evaluating the
evidentiary value of non excluded suspects, compared to the traditional
RMNE approach. As illustrated by an example based on a real rape case,
our approach can be easily implemented and can shorten the gap between
the two approaches by utilizing more information of the case.

The 59th World Statistics Congress (WSC) of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), Hong Kong, China, 25-30 August 2013

en_US

dc.identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/199491

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dc.description

Invited Paper Sessions (IPS) 21: Statistical reasoning in law

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dc.description.abstract

To establish the link between an arrested suspect and a crime case based
on a DNA mixture, one of the two main statistical tools used by forensic
scientists is the random man not excluded (RMNE) probability. The tradi-
tional RMNE approach omits any knowledge on the number of contributors
and is commonly regarded as being less powerful than the likelihood (LR)
approach. In view of the simplicity of interpretation of RMNE, which is the
major advantage of using it to present DNA evidences in court, we present
a new concept for the interpretation and calculation of the RMNE proba-
bility. A new approach for determining the non-exclusion of a random man
is proposed, upon which a general formula for the calculation of RMNE
probability is developed. By taking account of the number of contributors,
the new RMNE probability can be much more powerful for evaluating the
evidentiary value of non excluded suspects, compared to the traditional
RMNE approach. As illustrated by an example based on a real rape case,
our approach can be easily implemented and can shorten the gap between
the two approaches by utilizing more information of the case.

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dc.language

eng

en_US

dc.publisher

International Statistical Institute (ISI).

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dc.relation.ispartof

World Statistics Congress (WSC) of the International Statistical Institute (ISI)

en_US

dc.rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.